Vehicle diagnosis pertains to self-diagnosis of an abnormality of an engine, a transmission, and the like. The on-board diagnosis (OBD) system is one example of this vehicle diagnostic system. The development of the OBD system was encouraged by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a means to better monitor engine and fuel management performance for cleaner exhaust emissions. Beginning with model year 1996, the EPA has required vehicle manufacturers to install OBD systems for monitoring the vehicle's electrical and mechanical systems. Currently, intelligence in the vehicle alerts the driver that repairs or scheduled maintenance is needed. In other words, these OBD systems are designed to perform diagnostics onboard the vehicle as it drives down the road and determine likely problem area possibilities. The diagnostic information of the vehicle is stored in memory as code corresponding to the failure or alert. At authorized service centers, these failures or alerts can be read by connecting an external engine diagnostic tool, commonly called a scan tool, to the vehicle via a diagnosis connector. Scan tools reveal what is stored within the vehicle. Today, scan tools can access data stream information, diagnostic trouble codes (DTCs), perform some functional tests, and capture freeze frame data, and so on. In the authorized service center, repair in response to the failure code is performed.
The rate of change in automotive systems is creating new and more difficult problems to tackle. For example, as vehicle computer systems, like the OBDs, become more and more complex there exists a need to continuously update the scan tool devices used to diagnose vehicle faults. Currently, the method of updating scan tool devices consists of mailing CDs to authorized service centers on regular intervals. Each of these authorized centers has to manually update each of the scan tools they possess. This introduces scheduling and human error, and will not always result in the most recent scan tool software being utilized during the diagnosis process.
Thus, there is a significant need for a method and system for updating vehicle scan tool devices diagnostics software such that human error is minimized. It is an object of this invention to provide such a method and system.